Hodgdon Defense Composites showed off their Bath manufacturing facility June 27, giving the public a peek at their latest creation: a tiny, but vital rescue craft, built for the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command.

The Bath annex, an arm of Hodgdon Yachts of East Boothbay, is not building the sleek super yachts that helped cement the yard’s worldwide reputation for quality. This time, they are crafting a 13-foot super Jet Ski-like vessel designed to operate in rough waters.

Called the Guardian Angel Rescue Craft (aka Greenough Advance Rescue Craft) or GARC for short, the craft is designed to be dropped from Air Force cargo planes into the surf to rescue downed pilots or other victims.

Tim Hodgdon, the principal owner of the firm, said the yard was pleased to add the GARC to the line of more than 400 vessels delivered by the company since 1816.

The GARC are lifesavers. “They are packaged so they can be parachuted into the surf and be set up and ready to use in about two minutes,” said David Packhem, president of Hodgdon Defense. By contrast, some inflatable air dropped rescue vessels take as long as 45 minutes to inflate and set up, he said.

The Bath manufacturing facility, housed in a building leased from the city, provides jobs for seven full-time workers plus several part timers, who build the sturdy vessels out of specialized composite materials. The vessels’ 140 horsepower engines are mated to a water jet that pushes them to 40 knots plus in water as shallow as one foot. Each craft costs $70,000 plus, depending on the configuration, Packhem said.

Hodgdon is building the GARCs as the subcontractor for a firm called Rapid Response Technology. So far, Hodgdon has built and delivered two of the vessels and three more are scheduled to be delivered in August. Rapid Response has received an additional contract to deliver 16 more to the nation’s Air National Guard units in Alaska, Kentucky, New York and California.

“They want to get them, test them and see how it fits into their mission,” Packhem said.

In 2008, Hodgdon Defense built a different experimental vessel for the military. It is an 83-foot long prototype high speed vessel for the Defense Department’s Special Operations Command. The craft, called MAKO, was made of composite materials rather than the vessels currently in use which are made from aluminum. That craft is being tested by the U.S. Navy Seals.